We are all so afraid of fear that we push it away. We pretend it’s not there. We make up beliefs and stories to try and protect ourselves from ever getting hurt again, but by doing so, we live in the shadow of fear and let it control our every thought.

We become masters at suppressing our feelings. We push away and resist the things that bring up any negative emotions, and we obsess over chasing after external things that we think will bring us happiness instead. We create a larger and larger gap between how things are now, and how they need to be in the future in order for us to feel happy. Which leads to never feeling enough, always needing to do more, and constantly remaining unfulfilled.

"Feel the fear and do it anyway." I'm sure you've heard this, or something similar to this, before. It's one of my favorite quotes and I repeat it pretty much daily. As an entrepreneur and recovering perfectionist, this has become one of my life mantras to encourage me to take inspired action in my life and business despite my fear.But how can you tell the difference between good fear and bad fear? If I "feel the fear" of jumping off a bridge into shark-infested waters, should I still just "do it anyway"? Is that somehow going to make me happier or live a better life?

Not too long ago, I was in a dark place. I was working a 9-to-5 job that had me stressed, overworked, and overwhelmed, but I was too afraid to look at other options. I was in a relationship that wasn’t working, but I was too afraid of what might happen if I were alone to make any changes. I was neglecting my physical health, choosing a poor diet and drinking an excess of alcohol to numb out the pain I was feeling every day. Shit sucked, to say the least.

I started to experience anxiety and panic attacks. The first one hit me hard and it felt like I was going to die. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I’d been practicing yoga for several years and had a pretty regular meditation practice, but I couldn't calm down and I didn't know why. Why couldn’t I get the thoughts to stop? Why was my heart racing so fast? What the hell was going on?!

I just spent the past several days on a family vacation. I had been with other people all week with very little alone time, feeling stressed out because I wasn’t working on my business as much as I had wanted to, and was over-indulging on wine, ice cream and french fries. (It’s a delicate balance between work and play as an entrepreneur, you know.)

Anyways... I decided to take my family’s kayak out on the small pond behind their house this morning. I made my way out to the center of the pond where the water was still and calm. I just floated there in the kayak for a while listening to the sound of the birds and the trees rustling in the wind, feeling the warm sun on my skin, and admiring the way the blues of the water and the greens of the land complimented each other just so perfectly. I suddenly noticed that the biggest smile had popped up on my face. And in that moment, I realized something: this is the happiness I’ve spent so much time looking for.

In these moments, you have a choice to respond truthfully, in line with your soul’s deepest desires and cravings, or to put on the mask of what we think the world wants to see. In these moments, you can choose to courageously be yourself or to be whatever it is that the world wants you to be.

Do you have a daily gratitude practice? Many of the top health and wellness experts have recently shared the scientific benefits of expressing gratitude every day. Not only does it make you feel awesome to think about the good things in your life, but expressing gratitude can positively change your mindset to expectand attractgood things to happen in the future.

The key to happiness isn’t about the external world. The key to true happiness is to maintain inner peace and balance despite what’s happening in the external world around you.

When you can master a mindset of inner balance and live from a place of alignment with your most authentic self, the external stuff doesn’t matter. You’re no longer living in reaction mode – responding to outside stimuli and letting your thoughts be controlled by emotion. Instead, you’re living in collaboration with the universe. You’re proactively creating your environment by choosing how you want to see the world around you.

I know what it’s like to feel stuck. There’s this feeling that things just aren’t quite right in one or several areas of your life, but you don’t know how to put your finger on it. Or you might feel as if there are way too many things going wrong right now that you can’t even figure out where to begin to fix it.

If things aren’t going right for you, there’s a good chance that your mindset needs to be reevaluated. As Dr. Wayne Dyer said, “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”

Do you know what your core values are?

I used to have NO IDEA about mine. I was feeling so stuck and unfulfilled with my 9-to-5 job. I kept feeling frustrated in my relationship, like something was missing, and had a hard time really being alone with myself. I’d busy myself during the day with tons of work, caffeine, and mindless exercise, and then numb myself at night with alcohol and binge watching Netflix. My anxiety and depression kept getting worse and worse, even though I started seeing a therapist and taking medication to help with my mood swings.

I thought I was doing everything right. Which made me feel even worse because, at the end of the day, I was still so unhappy.

So what changed? Since things were definitely not going right in my external world, I began to look inside for answers instead. I got clear on what my core values are – freedom, authenticity, creativity, connection, service – and I could suddenly see so vividly that my current lifestyle was totally out of sync with these things.